


Ashes in the Field

by heartratemonitor



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Casual Sex, M/M, Pining, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 20:38:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20459123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartratemonitor/pseuds/heartratemonitor
Summary: The more he finds out about Byleth, the less he likes.





	Ashes in the Field

Hubert is injured in Remire’s gory skirmish. The professor rushes to his aid and he endures the humiliation of being held in the man’s arms. White magic stitches up the wound and in his blood-drained weakness, his head lolls to the unfamiliar chest and finds no heartbeat, but clings to him all the same. He is forced to retreat in an abandoned hovel until the fight ends. Doubting how many people would believe him, he keeps the knowledge of the man’s heart to himself.

Perhaps all that watching and scrutinizing is frying his nerves. Most people break into easy to understand components. Neurotic. Loves to fight. Hates conflict. Enjoys hunting. Byleth Eisner, however, is a dark and murky horizon of disparate parts. In teaching, he is steadfast and patient; slow to anger and laughter. His smile has an uncertain hesitance. It is during fighting that he shines like a terrifying, gleaming beacon; cold and even like the silent organ in his chest. Hubert wonders which one is more him, but likes the latter best; likes how it fills him with an odd, luxurious fear and a second, unnameable thing.

His likes, however, are something he must stifle and swallow if it means to serve Her Grace. If the professor is useful to her, then he’ll be fortunate enough to have his preferences align with her own. If not, then it is a bit of a shame, but nothing new that he hasn’t already handed over.

While Hubert recovers in the infirmary, his teacher visits with a gift of coffee beans; neatly packed in an attractive jar. Gifts to his students are not uncommon, but he could have easily spent this much new gear, so Hubert is grateful, regardless. Still, it makes it somewhat less special to receive. As a man of few words, perhaps gift giving is how he gets to know others when words fail.

He holds the container between bandaged hands, and manages a wry smile. “Studying my preferences?”

Byleth laughs gently before taking his leave. Hubert cannot help but feel as though he has been privy to something rare.

* * *

Desires are harsh and nebulous, and Hubert finds comfort in scattering his wants like ashes in a field to serve another. So easy, to step in one’s shadow and meld into it, like a snake shedding unnecessary skin. If ever held powerless and at knife point, he would never admit that his servitude to his Lady is in part fueled by the overwhelming loudness of freedom, strange and new, filled with paths too frightening to follow.

The more he finds out about Byleth, the less he likes.

When the students spin like overjoyed marionettes at the ball, he almost considers asking him to the floor, if only to later excuse it as an excuse to get to know him, or a trick. Claude beats him to the punch, and he settles for watching the easy sway of bodies. Edelgard is in the arms of a stranger that has a similar style of hair as her teacher, and half the charm. Byleth floats with the ease of a nymph, or a ghost.

Despite better judgment, Hubert stands when Claude is done with his little ruse, and asks for the professor’s hand, who obliges. He rests a hand on his teacher’s strong, slim waist, and they sashay with the ease of a square peg into a round hole until the professor takes the lead, easing Hubert’s uncharacteristic hesitance.

It is easy to excuse this as vying a better view of his Lady, and Hubert sneaks glances at her and the single serve suitor, but somehow Byleth’s smile brings him back, steady and calm. Up close, he seems older than most of the students, but not by much. Perhaps they are around the same age, then. Should he be useful to Lady Edelgard, perhaps it would not be too much to keep him. He’d make an excellent royal tactician. It would ease the loneliness-

This is thinking too far ahead, and Hubert firmly places himself back in reality, head inching closer to his dance partner’s. He can’t quite read his eyes; he never can, truly, but it’s soft and yielding in the ballroom light, like a kiss without a mouth.

Maybe he’s drunk from want and spurned on from the dance, but days later, he stumbles his way into the door of the Professor’s quarters late into the night when the Lady is safe and fast asleep. Security is lax on the dormitories tonight, focusing on the entryways. The man is bleary eyed and in his night clothes; mouth open in surprise to find Hubert at his steps.

“What’s wrong, did something happen?” he asks, and then his posture relaxes, as though knowing. “Is there something you want?”

“Playing coy?” Hubert says, more desperate than he had anticipated. He shuts the door and lunges forward for a kiss. Byleth catches him by his wrists and pins him to his bulletin board; schedules and reminders fall to the ground in soft flutters. He kisses Hubert on the lips; the brush brief and feather light before letting him go.

“This is unlike you,” Byleth says, though his smile betrays amusement. “I didn’t expect you to attempt seduction as one of your weapons.”

“I-” Hubert stops, and stares at his professor as though he grew a second head. “You misunderstand. I-”

Too far and too fast. “I apologize, Professor. Let us never speak of this again.”

He rushes out of the personal quarters, face red with shame. Byleth calls for him in the dark, but he doesn’t indulge the luxury of turning back.

* * *

It is easy to stifle his wants in the five years of Byleth’s absence. He falls in the comfort of swallowing the bulk of his needs to fill his Lady’s. It is easier. It is also harder, in some ways, in the nights where he imagines a future with a dead man that will never arrive. He does not stay dead for long. Even for an aberration with no heartbeat carrying the flesh of a god, however, Hubert would be lying if he said he wasn’t surprised.

Either way, they don’t speak of the incident, but their interactions are less laced with tension with knowledge of Byleth’s loyalty. He periodically brings Hubert flowers from the greenhouse, or coffee from the trader, but the professor brings gifts to everyone, and it makes it less special; less personal.

“I’ll take it,” he’d say to the trinkets he doesn’t particularly want, but it makes him grateful regardless.

Hubert hurts himself in a skirmish, and the professor visits him in his bed side; a mirror of the event years before. Byleth’s eyes dart to the violets, lavenders, and other small flowers, now wilted, in a vase on his night stand.

“You kept them,” he says to Hubert, giving him a container of strong imported coffee beans from a merchant.

“Of course I did,” Hubert says, his laughter anxious and weak.

Byleth takes his hand, pale and calloused. Hubert offers no signs of protest, eyes darting away as the man kisses his knuckles.

“What is that supposed to signify?” he asks, unsure if he wants to know.

“It’s a maybe,” Byleth replies, planting a second one on his forehead.

* * *

“If I had two lives to give, I might devote one of them to you.”

It’s as close to a confession as Hubert can get. He does not expect Byleth at the door to his room that night. He does not expect a kiss in the mouth and he does not expect to yield to the sweetness. Their clothes scatter his floor with casual abandon. Likely, neither of them are unpracticed in this area, but Byleth is achingly gentle and deliberate, peppering kisses down Hubert’s bared throat. They move a languid, exploratory rhythm in dim candle light. Byleth mouths his scars with tongue and teeth like a calf against sweet blossoms; Hubert hisses a sigh while buried against his motionless heart.

Foreplay is not his strong point; sex is a brief pastime or a bribe payment for Hubert, but having something this delicate, something he can ruin and regret losing- it’s terrifying. He’s pinned to the bed by the man’s weight and he doesn’t know what is expected of him, but Byleth grasps the two of them together and the friction is sweeter than any sugar he’s ever been offered. He gasps for air but finds his mouth engulfed, and relinquishes his worry, if just for tonight.

With restrained teeth, he nibbles along the sensitive muscle of Byleth’s shoulder, both their breaths interspersed by soft interruptions. This will only prove troublesome in the long run; neither of them can marry, and Hubert’s affections could interrupt with his duties. However tempting love as a dalliance instead of an obligation may be, he must not stray from his goals-

Byleth interrupts him by easing himself onto his girth. He’s prepared himself ahead of time, and Hubert heats up at both the knowledge and the sensation. He grasps his partner’s flagging erection in vague harmony with Byleth’s grind; grabs fistfuls of his teacher’s hair and they kiss viciously, wantonly.

This is some hell of a maybe.

Byleth is close and weary. Hubert guides him with bruising hands against his waist, and Byleth repays him with teeth marks on his shoulders and crescent moon divots from his nails. For a moment, he can see both animal and holy vessel, nude and riding him in wild abandon. He is no penitent himself, but this is one god he would not mind praying to.

Hubert comes first. Byleth rides him beyond sensitivity, milking his own pleasure until both are past dry. Hubert helps him to climax with a few tired strokes, and they collapse into a drained pile in one corner of the worn bed.

He tries not to think about how many confessions Byleth has likely received, or the looks of the girls and even Linhardt as he walks past. His play times with Ferdinand has nothing of this intensity, though it may just be too early to tell. They may as well all enjoy themselves in the meantime.

A maybe is not what he’d like, but it will do for now.


End file.
